Sunday, May 31, 2009

Pentecostal Renewal


This quilt was made by Linda Schmidt for her congregation to celebrate the Christian festival of Pentecost, which is today this year. Because Pentecost is fifty days after Easter it tends to wander around the calendar. As goes the Day of Resurrection, so goes Pentecost. This is the birth day of the Christian church and we always read the story from the Acts of the Apostles with its bewildering story of a rushing wind and tongues of flame. We can't really know what happened, which is a good thing. What Acts proclaims is that those early followers of Jesus got out there and shared the gospel.

In Canada Christians aren't doing so well in that department --sharing our story that is. In one of the most free and prosperous countries on the planet we are hard pressed to be enthusiastic about our faith. Not only are our general numbers declining in mainline (old-line?) churches, our young people are leaving in droves.

Is there good news/Good News about the church these days? I think its interesting that the blog with the greatest number of responses in a while was the one showing our St. Paul's young people at Conference recently. You liked what you saw of these kids, and several of them weighed in to say that they had enjoyed the experience immensely. That's good news to me.

How about for you?

2 comments:

Deborah Laforet said...

It was great to see how many young people went to Conference this year from St. Paul's. The news that less and less young people are in the United Church over all is distressing for me.

As a thirty-something with young children, I find it can be a very lonely place. At our Saskatchewan Conference meeting, there were only four children, and two of them were mine. I long to meet more people in ministry with children. Unfortunately, they seem to be few and far between.

David Mundy said...

I took some photos of the kids at Bay of Quinte, a group of about two dozen in addition to the youth.

I appreciate your consternation Deb. Raising children as Christians is a parental responsibilty, but we want them to share that journey with others their own age.